Consider What Jesus Says Just Before He Ascends into Heaven Jesus’s first recorded words in the Bible are when he’s twelve years old and disappears. His parents eventually find him in the temple. His perplexing answer explains he belongs in his Father’s house (Luke 2:49). With these as his first words, now let’s look at […]
Jesus Comes for Everyone: All Nations, All People The phrases God’s people, the chosen ones, the chosen, and other similar references appear in multiple places throughout the Old Testament. This designation certainly makes the Jewish people feel special. After all, God chose them to be his people. This must mean he likes them better than […]
Celebrate Jesus as the Messiah and Savior In our current usage today, many people talk (and think) that Christ is Jesus’s last name, as in Jesus Christ. Though the identifier of Jesus Christ does appear in most of the New Testament, it didn’t start out that way. Christ The label of Christ does not appear […]
Let God Prune Us So We Can Produce More Fruit Isaiah looks forward to the day when the Branch of the Lord will appear. Branch, with a capital B, is a euphemism for Jesus, who will come to rescue God’s people. Isaiah says this Branch will emerge as awesome and full of wonder, which is […]
Do What You Can to Promote Peace In Jesus’s best-known sermon, which we call the Sermon on the Mount, he proclaims that “Blessed are the peacemakers.” They’ll be known as God’s children (Matthew 5:9). Though Jesus doesn’t explicitly command us to advocate for peace, he proclaims blessings on those who do. And the blessings are […]
We Can’t Witness for Jesus When We Sequester Ourselves on Sunday Mornings Just before Jesus leaves this world to return to heaven, he instructs his followers to go into the world and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). In an expanded version of this incident, Jesus tells his followers to wait for Holy Spirit power and then […]
A Timeless Classic with Eternal Implications Ben-Hur (2016) is a story of Jewish Prince Judah Ben-Hur who seeks to avoid scrutiny in the first century Jerusalem as he navigates the tricky ground between Jewish zealots and the Roman occupiers, all while doing what is right. When an act of generosity brings about his ultimate betrayal, […]
Celebrating Holy Spirit Power In another post we talked about the four main Christian holidays. In succession, they celebrate that Jesus came to earth (Christmas), died so we could live (Good Friday), overcame death to prove his mastery of it (Easter), and having completed his mission, he gave us a gift (Pentecost). Pentecost is the […]
The New Testament Cites the Old Testament Many passages in the New Testament of the Bible quote parts of the Old Testament, which was written hundreds of years before. In some versions of the Bible, footnotes—added by the translators—refer us to the original text. Holy Spirit One verse, however, cites the source in the text, […]
Seek Ways to Make Our Faith Communities Relevant to a Postmodern World In the early 2000s there was much talk about the emergent church. The idea was to address shrinking church attendance by taking steps to be more pertinent to a younger audience, many who dismissed the religious practices of prior generations. These people weren’t […]